Man discovered the art of fishing with a baited hook tied to the end of a length of line countless centuries ago. Although the fishing arts have progressed rapidly in many directions, including improvements made to the hand-held apparatus used by a fisherman to deploy and retrieve the baited hook, that portion of the fishing apparatus which actually lies beneath the surface of the water, that is, the barbed hook and a portion of the fishing line, have largely been improved only by changes in the materials used for their fabrication. In particular, the "art" of setting a hook in the mouth of a fish when the fish "bites" the baited hook has remained primarily a matter of skill which must be acquired and practiced. Even though a number of devices have been suggested in recent years which had as their purpose improvement in the setting of a hook in the mouth of a fish, the prior art has not provided a simple, economical, and reliable device for this purpose. Various spring devices are provided by the prior art which disclose the use of a spring which is tensionably held until released when a fish strikes a baited hook, the hook being then set in the mouth of the fish by the rapid energetic compression of the spring. However, none of the prior devices disclose the present device wherein a pivot arm is provided with a plurality of notches, a selected one of the notches receiving an end of a tensioned spring such that the pivot arm is pivoted downwardly when a fish strikes the baited hook. The spring is thus disengaged from the notch in the pivot arm and released, thereby allowing contraction of the spring to its untensioned conformation. The hook, which is attached to the spring by means of a short length of line, is thereby set in the mouth of the fish. The present device has spaced apertures provided in a central body member thereof so that a user of the device can adjust the tensioning of the spring to provide a desired level of force when the spring retracts. Further, a plurality of notches are provided in the pivot arm, the user thereby being able to vary the level of force necessary to trip the spring and thus set the hook. In this manner, a conscious choice can be made by the fisherman relative to the size of the fish which he wishes to be capable of triggering the setting of the hook.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide an apparatus useful with a fishing line and hook for setting the hook in the mouth of a fish when the hook is struck by a fish.
It is another object of the invention to provide a fishhook setting apparatus which can be adjusted by a user to determine the force which will be applied to set the hook in the mouth of a fish when the fish strikes the hook.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a fishhook setting apparatus which can be adjusted by a user to determine the size and strength of a fish necessary to cause operation of the apparatus.